You can shuffle and side-step all you
want to, but that is the plain fact of the matter."
The vice-president sat up and braced his arms on the edge of the table.
"You are too much for me, Blount--you hold out too many cards; and I'm
no apprentice at the game, either. In all these years we've been
dickering together you've always been a hard-bitted and consistent
fighter for your own hand. What's happened to you lately? Have you
acquired a new set of convictions? Or have you been figuring out a
different way of whipping the devil around the stump?"
"Oh, I don't know," returned the guest, with large good-nature. "We are
all growing older--and wiser, perhaps. You don't deny the debt you owe
us, do you?"
"Do we owe you anything, Blount?" asked the magnate pointedly, and with
a definite emphasis upon the personal pronoun. "If we do, we are willing
to pay it in spot cash, on demand."
The big man on the other side of the table was leaning back in his chair
with his hands in his pockets, and the smile wrinkling at the corners of
his eyes was half-genial, half-satirical.
"It's lucky we're alone, McVickar," he remarked. "A third fellow
standing around and hearing you talk might imagine that you are trying
to bribe me."
"That's all right, Blount; this is between us two, and we understand
each other. Nothing for nothing is the accepted rule the world over, and
we both recognize it.
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